Tuesday, August 09, 2005

Closing the Gender Gap

I realized something very important the other day as I was changing my shoes for the third time before rushing out the door for work. Men have one pair of each type of shoe (or at least most of the straight men I know do). For instance, my husband has one pair of dress shoes, one pair of sandals, and one pair of sneakers. He may have a few other pairs of shoes languishing at the bottom of the "give-away" pile - but those clearly don't count.

I, on the other hand, have 1 pair of clogs, 1 pair of keds, 1 pair of sneakers (different from keds - the women out there know this, so I'm just explaining this to any straight men still reading this), 4 pairs of sandals (2 dressy pairs and 2 casual pairs), 2 pairs of black loafers (to be worn with slacks), 1 pair of knee-high boots, 1 pair of low boots, and 3 pairs of "work" heels. Yet with all of these shoes I still find myself trying on at least 3 different pairs each morning before I am satisfied (or at least running so late that I can't waste any more time on finding the "right" pair of shoes) with my selection.

My husband, smart man that he is, has learned to stay away from me during my daily shoe-finding frenzy. My son is too young to understand this yet, so it's my husband's job to ply him with Fruit Loops and grapes until the disturbance has passed and it is safe to re-enter my presence.

This got me thinking that one day my husband will have to sit down with The Boy and have "the talk." You know, the conversation that starts out like this,

"Son, love between a man and a woman is a beautiful thing and the ways of love are mysterious yet delightful. What you need to understand, however, before you can even think about getting past second base is to never, and I mean NEVER, tell a woman her shoes don't match her outfit. As a matter of fact, never say anything about a woman's attire. It'll only lead to heartache and - more than likely - a crushed larynx."

I have no logical explanation as to why women are compelled to find the absolute "right" shoe. I'm 33 years old and still don't understand this phenomenon - yet I engage in this silly ritual each day like a lemming racing over a cliff.

4 Comments:

But let's face it, if you pick the wrong pair your day is screwed. And if you're like me and your feet grew when you were pregnant then there's all kinds of shoes in there that used to fit and still kind of do but not really, but you don't want to get rid of them.

It's a shame to cover up those gorgeous feet with ANYTHING that isnt strappy and bejewelled in my opinion.

On another note, only ONE pair of Keds and ONE pair of sneakers? Wow. Thats' practically straight man in my book. I have 6 pairs of sneakers, 3 pairs of keds, 4 pairs of converse low tops, so on and so forth. Yet I am always either barefoot or wearing the shoes you claim to hate ( but which perk up your nips every time you see them, admit it).